The Bluecoats Drum and Bugle Corps is a World Class competitive junior drum and bugle corps based in Canton, Ohio.

In 1972, Canton police officers Babe Stearn and Ralph McCauley, the director and assistant director of the Canton Police Boys' Club, met with Canton businessman Art Drukenbrod to discuss forming a music program at the Boys' Club. Besides being a businessman, Mr. Drukenbrod was a musician who had played drums with many of Canton's big bands over the years. He was also a member of Canton's American Legion and VFW's national champion senior drum and bugle corps. He readily agreed to the idea of a youth musical group for the Canton Boys’ Club; he supplied the drum corps knowledge and instruction, with some help from his old drum corps buddies, while Stearn and McCauley provided the future musicians.

The young corps members chose the name "Bluecoats" in tribute to the police department's retired police officers and as recognition that they were a program of the Police Boys' Club. They made their drum corps debut in competition in 1974.

On the road, old surplus Army buses painted blue initially carried the corps throughout the country. Those outdated vehicles were gradually traded in for used school buses and then for air-conditioned motor coaches.

In the early days, meals were served from an abandoned U-Haul trailer pulled by parents' cars; the trailer sometimes held fresh eggs, purchased economically when volunteers agreed to collect them themselves. The old U-Haul eventually became a van and then an old travel trailer, before the corps eventualy acquired an eighteen-wheeled semi-trailer kitchen.

Today, as the corps travels around the country during its summer tour, it moves in a convoy composed of several buses to carry the members and staff, a semi-trailer equipment truck, the aforementioned cook truck, a souvenir van and trailer, and several support vehicles.

The evolution of the Bluecoats was greatly enhanced when in 1984 another Canton businessman, Ted Swaldo, took the reins of the organization to prevent the corps being shut down. Swaldo's management abilities and enthusiasm provided the catalyst that not only propelled the Bluecoats into national recognition as a competitive unit, but it also served as a model for other youth organizations throughout the country.

The first corps from Ohio to make the DCI finals (in 1987), the Bluecoats in those days found themselves in high acclaim around the country for their crowd-pleasing big band jazz. As the Bluecoats continued to rise in prominence, the applause from the crowd grew into a roar of "Bloooooo!" as the corps enters the field and at the conclusion of their musical program.

Founded in and supported by the people of the "Hall of Fame City," Canton, Ohio, the Bluecoats home show has become a part of the induction festivities for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which is located in Canton. The corps has failed to achieve DCI Finals only once since 1987, just missing with a 13th place finish in 1999

In 2010, the corps medaled for the first time at the DCI World Championships, taking the third place bronze with their production "Metropolis: The Future Is Now." They followed that in 2014, making corps history again by taking the 2nd place silver medal for their wildly popular show, "TILT." In 2015, their production entitled "Kinetic Noise," once more took home the bronze.

At the 2016 DCI World Championships, the Bluecoats "Down Side Up" program won 1st place in World Class Finals, with the corps becoming only the tenth to become DCI Champions since the competition began in 1972. The show earned the corps' highest DCI score of 97.65 and won both the General Effect and Music captions.

For 2016, the Bluecoats abandoned their traditional uniforms in favor of a more informal costume designed with the show's near-constant motion in mind. The brass and percussion wore white and the color guard yellow, both with a swirling, sequined blue accent stripe running from the left hand to the shoulder, across the chest, and down the right leg. Those 2016 Bluecoats also became the first corps to win the DCI title while wearing no hats, helmets, shakos, or any other headgear.